What does following have to do with faith?  Well, what is following but one person acting upon a decision to go in the same direction as the leader? A Christian, really, is nothing but a Christ follower in the great tradition of the earliest disciples.

Matthew 4:18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him. 

Faith.  It’s as easy as following.

The movie Life of Pi which we’ve been using for Lent 2018 devotionals shifts today when instead of “Why?” Pi asks, “Why not?”  Pi’s father had challenged his mother about Pi’s religious sampling saying, “No Gita, [Pi’s brother] Ravi has a point, no? You cannot follow three different religions at the same time, Piscine.”  The young Pi asks, “Why not?” to which his father explains, 

Because believing in everything at the same time is the same as not believing in anything at all.” 

***

The action of following makes it abundantly clear:  We cannot come to a fork in the road and take it. There’s a point of decision, a choice.  To go forward or back, to the left or the right, up or down.  To follow one way or another.  No one can follow all directions simultaneously.  At some point we believe in nothing or all others must fall away, leave one.

Food for thought:

• In what ways do Christians try to follow the world’s ways and Christ’s way at the same time?  What causes them to do it? 
• Ponder ideas of syncretism and assimilation.  If three major monotheistic religions claim the only One True God, how does COEXIST fail every time?  Why does it fail?
• This idea of choosing which way to follow goes way back to the early days of the chosen people.  Deuteronomy 30:15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. 17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
• Joshua 24:15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
• Who and what do you follow? 

Join me next time for “Why Can’t God Give Us a Sign to Prove Himself?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

If there was a top 10 list of reasons why people reject Christianity, the idea of its being a “patriarchal religion” would make the top 10, probably even the top 5.  No one accuses Jesus of misogyny, but He’s been caricatured as not being a manly man anyway.  He gently holds lambs and no macho man carries lambs around.  The Apostle Paul, however, has that accusation chained to his ankle 24/7 since he picked up a stylus and located a parchment on which to write.  Where does this idea come from?  Earlier than the letters to the Corinthians.  I’d argue its root goes way back…to the Father/Son thing.

Why Did God Send His Son, Not a Daughter? 

For that matter, why Adam first and not Eve? 

Why does Christianity seem to disfavor women?  After all, there are very few heroines in the Bible or women we even know much about.  

None of the Twelve. 

None of the Books of the Bible were openly written by a woman.

I am a woman and I have no problem with God sending His Son because the world was not and is not a vacuum.  We cannot read 21st century ideas back into a first century document.  God surely knew what the first century would be like. 

Ah, but what came first, Barb-ol-pal?

(The chicken.  Genesis 1:20-21)

Anyway, in our present culture where “toxic masculinity” is derided as the singular source of the world’s problems, God’s answer was to send His Son Jesus, a biological male, the second Adam, to pay for what the first Adam had done.  There is some sense in which God is Father and His Son is a chip off the old block.  Only His Son could reveal who the Father is.  It’s representation in addition to having its root in both history and biology.  1 Corinthians 15:47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

Think about it:

• Many American families have children living with the mother who are born from numerous fathers.  Do we ever see the converse, children of many mothers living with the father?  Why not?  How is fatherhood different than motherhood?
• As a strong woman, a leader, a thinker, and a believer in God’s Image stamped upon both male and female, I’m going to open a whole can of worms and ask “In what ways are cultural notions of things like toxic masculinity, women’s empowerment, sexual freedom and political feminism at variance with Scripture and how do they undermine Christianity?”
• Biologically speaking, how is born of a woman (Eve was the mother of the living), not the same as a matriarchal religion or a feminist revisionism?  Galatians 4: 4 “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” 
• What does sonship have to do with inheritance in the early Bible times?  How does reading our culture back into the first century create a disconnect and chip away at Christianity’s foundation?

Join me tomorrow for Why Follow? 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Suffering.  It’s awfully hard to explain in life.  In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker asked, 

Where was God when the mass shooting happened?” 

It’s as if God doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or revels in mass murder.  Questions of that sort provide no comfort whatsoever to grieving parents.

Always standing in the dark shadows of every tragedy is that voice of the cruel skeptic, questioning the love of God.  The power of God. 

The goodness of God.  The awareness of God. 

Even His existence.

The antagonist’s and skeptic’s voices are different from the voice of Pi in the movie Life of Pi which we’ve been using to launch our 2018 Lent Devotional series of Why questions and answers.  There is an innocence in his voice which asks, “Why would a god do that? Why would he send his own son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people? …That made no sense. Sacrificing the innocent to atone for the sins of the guilty? What kind of love is that?” 

Isaiah 53:10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

***

Why was it God’s Will for His Son to suffer and die?  It’s a good question with a good answer: suffering’s benefit is everlasting. 

“When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly …But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”  (Romans 5:6, 8-9)

What makes it even more profound is that suffering and death are not God’s ultimate will for you and me.  They are his means of drawing us close because His will is that we should seek Him and live (Amos 5:4).

Food for thought:

• When tragedy strikes, do you blame God? 
• I choose to believe that in any person’s moment just before death, Jesus makes one final appeal in their spirit.  Death happens when their spirit is ripped from their body.  In the final moments before death, the two criminals on the crosses beside Jesus’ offer a picture of the choice God lays before us: do we suffer in order to believe and live…or do we suffer and die in rebellion?  I choose to believe that each person at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School acknowledged Jesus’ appeal in their hearts and only God knows their answer.  What do you think? 

Next time, Why Did God Send His Son Not a Daughter? 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

If people have a sensitive queasy-factor, parts of the Bible can be a tough read.  All the blood makes their stomachs turn.  Most of us don’t like blood a whole lot.  We’re glad we have it pumping through a working heart to operate a functioning brain and entire pulmonary and vascular system.  We get a cut and start bleeding and our first response is to stop the bleeding.  Many of us don’t like to see blood at all, even when it’s going into a tube for a blood test.

Why, then, does so much of the Bible talk about blood?  It’s a turn-off.  It’s gross. 

***

It’s even scary.  So much so, that most children’s Bibles really don’t give the graphic descriptions that their parents’ Bibles have.  Even movies involving the Crucifixion, prior to Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” downplayed the bloodiness of the event…even though Hollywood doesn’t care that much about lots of bloodshed if depicting it in non-Crucifixion ways.  Indeed, it revels in it as a box-office draw so long as no one mentions sin.

But that’s why blood is important.  As early as the days of Cain and Abel, the blood of Abel, his life cried out (Genesis 4:10) and God connects blood to life. Genesis 9:4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 “And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”

If we correctly and fully understand the Image of God and how important our Image-bearing is, then atrocities like the mass murder at Stoneman Douglas become even more heart-wrenching.  Every single fatality was a person with a soul and lifeblood and bearing the Image of God.

Food for thought:

• In the days of the Old Testament with all the bloody sacrifices, in what way was it driven home that sin leads to death?  In what way was there a reminder of the importance of life? 
• In the Life of Pi which we’ve been using for Lent 2018, the father demands his boys watch as the tiger Richard Parker grabs a live goat, kills it, and drags it off to devour it.  The mother didn’t want them to see it.  The father insisted that there was an important lesson there. 
• By sanitizing our lives free from blood, are we deluding ourselves into believing that sin isn’t really a problem, it isn’t costly, or a matter of life and death?  Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
• If sin’s consequences came with an annual reminder by having to kill an animal, would we think sin was all that fun, pleasurable, glamorous, or humorous?  Would we be as inclined to make truth relative? 
• How did Jesus’ perfect sacrifice do away with the sacrificial system? Hebrews 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Join me tomorrow for “Why Is Suffering God’s Will?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

In the Life of Pi (the movie we’ve been using for our 40 days of hard questions “Why?”), the young boy Pi asks the priest, “Why would a god do that? Why would he send his own son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people?”

For an evangelist or a pastor, this is the dream opportunity: someone asking for the Gospel dump truck to be unloaded in one major download! 

That’s when the priest in the movie comes up short and only answers with that Sunday school answer “All you need to know is that He loves you”.  In real life, Catholic priests do better than that.  But the movie portrays a golden opportunity frustratingly answered with half-reply which explains why I prefer to get my theology from the Good Book…and not from the silver screen.

Where is all the evidence for why we need a Savior? 

• Well, start with the holiness of God. 
• Then there’s the sinfulness and rebellion of mankind (but often glorified as freedom and pleasure in movies and TV). 
• God’s justified wrath against sin (obviously not something Hollywood wants to recall in all the carnage it likes to display). 
• And then there’s the outcome of life left to our own devices: De-Vices are what keep us apart from heaven and God’s presence and result in that separation called Hell (something Hollywood also doesn’t like to talk about much).

Even in the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, there is an object lesson–a vivid reminder of 17 young lives lost because we have a culture of sin and death nurtured daily in our media, an evil culture that bore fruit in the life of the killer.  Romans 5:8 reminds us of life and death and our need for a Savior, no matter what our age is.  

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

Too much to dream that the Catholic priest in the Life of Pi would state his view as clearly as the Apostle Paul: Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

For further thought:

• Read Romans 1:16-25 and identify the ways Hollywood—teaching by way of entertainment—is at odds with Paul’s proclamation.
• Read Romans 5 which answers Pi’s question clearly and without sugar-coating. 
• Will any amount of saying “I’m sorry” restore the 17 lives lost in Parkland, FL?  In what ways does Jesus’ sacrifice make hope possible–that even though those 17 cannot be brought back to life upon this earth, there is hope they live eternally?

Join me tomorrow for one of those topics that pastors don’t talk about often: ”Why Does God Like Blood So Much? It’s a Turn-off.”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.” (Hosea 14:2)

Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. 5 I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots; 6 his young shoots will grow. His splendor will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon. 7 Men will dwell again in his shade. He will flourish like the grain. He will blossom like a vine, and his fame will be like the wine from Lebanon… 9 Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the LORD are right; the righteous walk in them.”

Couldn’t Jesus have come just as a spiritual being or a vision and been everywhere, all at once? 

In the movie, Life of Pi, that we have been using as our launch pad for 40 hard questions of Why for Lent 2018 devotionals, the priest elaborates on his Sunday school answer: “Because He loves us. God made Himself approachable to us-human-so we could understand Him. We can’t understand God in all His perfection, but we can understand God’s Son and His suffering as we would a brother’s.” 

That’s a bit more pastoral than the Sunday school answer, an explanation beyond the cliché.

When you stop to think about it, a vision or a spirit might have been more efficient or impressive for show, but a whole lot less relatable to us.  A vision could blow our minds.  A spirit could intrigue us.  But only a human is truly understandable.  So finite.  So limited.  So … normal.

And yet even in His body, Jesus was remarkable because of what He revealed to us about the Father.  Oh, and the remarkable things He’d do!  Jesus answered Thomas’ and Philip’s inquiry in the most surprising way John 14:7 “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”

If the pre-crucifixion Jesus was still unrecognizable to Thomas and Philip after ministering among them for his 3-year ministry, just imagine how unrecognizable He would have been had He been Spirit or vision instead of the “Word made flesh” (John 1:14).

Think about it:

• Showing up as a Spirit has many advantages.  The Holy Spirit’s coming at Pentecost proves that point.  What are some of the advantages of an indwelling Spirit compared to an external human teacher?  What are some of the disadvantages?
• What did the sufferings of Christ do and how did His suffering make Him approachable and understandable?  What happened on the Cross?  What happened at the tomb and on Easter morning? For insight, read “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)  
• Could a spirit or a vision alone accomplish this? 

Join me tomorrow for “Why Do We Need a Savior?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

We’re living in a day and age of “identity politics.”  A time in which people gather with affinities for those who are like them and pinpoint others by their affiliations.  In one sense, this labeling is terribly wrong, making the assumption that everyone who identifies with a certain category, organization, or ethnicity is the same.  But in another sense, there’s an accuracy where there’s true identity.  Such is the case with the Image of God.

God’s Image is important to Him.  Jesus, the Son of God, perfectly is the Image of God.  He didn’t just display this Image.  He radiated and embodied God’s Image in all His glory.  

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  (Hebrews 1:3)

***

Mankind (Jesus’ brothers and sisters in the family of man) bears the Image of God.  But there’s a difference: Jesus is the Image of God, but we only bear this Image imperfectly on our side of Eden. 

Sadly, we have gradually departed from our desire to bear God’s Image and to do as Jesus would do.  How has this happened?  2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Indeed, we are blinded to our need for God and it expresses itself in a self-reliant rejection of God’s gracious offer of salvation in which we grow in Christlikeness.  2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

It also clouds our hearts to seeing the humanity of others: the unborn, the unlovely, the sinner, and anyone who believes differently than ourselves. 

What do we do instead, even in the Christian community?  James 3:9 “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.” 

One look at our political climate and we see this horror in full-bloom. 

Call it Resist or Hate or Trolling, it doesn’t matter. 

It’s wrong because we’re failing to see the humanity of others. There are people behind all labels, even the NRA and the anti-gun lobby…  

It’s a death-trap being conceived in the heart and leads to many atrocities.

Food for thought: 

1. There are many ways this dehumanizing of our fellow man/woman results in willing mistreatment of others.  Can you think of a few?
2. Identify all the ways rejecting the identity of God-follower and Image-bearer results in rebellion against God and hatred of our fellow man in 2 Timothy 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God– 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 
3. What are we doing when we mistreat others who are not like us? Matthew 25:40 “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
4. Are there any ways you need to repent of rebelling against the Image of God in Jesus Christ and against His Image, broken and needing restoration, in yourself?
5. In the Life of Pi which we’ve been using as our launchpad for 40 questions “Why?” the priest suggests that Jesus is someone with whose sufferings we can identify as with a brother’s.   How does God’s Image perfectly shown in the sufferings of the Son of Man call us back to Himself?

Join me tomorrow for “Why Didn’t Jesus Just Appear to All Without His Body?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Do you get tired of waiting?  Do you wish Jesus would just come to take us all home now?  Do you feel like a perennial child asking from the back seat of the station wagon,

Are we there yet?”

In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, Pi recounts his father’s abandonment of Hinduism in favor of atheism.  His father had been sick and Hinduism didn’t serve him the way Western medicine did.  He abandoned religion in favor of science.  Hindu gods had taken too long and provided no visible answer.

The Jewish people must have felt like that when Jesus first showed up on the scene.  They’d been persecuted and mistreated from Egypt to Rome to Babylon.  In their history books, they’d been gathered up, paraded through the Red Sea and wandered around in the desert for 40 years.  They’d been a great kingdom and a divided kingdom and a small remnant.  They’d lived in plenty and in famine.  They’d been homegrown but also exiled.  And all the while waiting for the vindication of God’s chosen people that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prophesied by Isaiah, Ezra, and Joel.  They had the Scriptures and knew what God had promised. 

But a long time passed between the promise made and the Messiah promised.

This issue of time and its being among the things no human can control, only manage, is a wedge of faith. Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

***

Funny thing is, God doesn’t think it took too long.  He alone knew the day and hour back then and He alone knows it for Jesus’ return.  He wants you to agree His timing is perfect.  It wasn’t enough time to forget the promise, but enough time to cultivate desire.  The world needed to be widely inhabited and time for the infrastructure of Rome to be established.  There needed to be a common language (koine Greek to enable the spread of the Gospel).   All of this made God’s timing perfect for Jesus to arrive.  Galatians 4: 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Food for thought: 

• In what way was Paul acknowledging the appointed time?  Titus 1:1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness– 2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior. 
• In what ways do science and this issue of control still present an obstacle to faith?
• Are you looking for Christ’s return or have you given up on waiting? 
• What things need to happen for Christ’s return to be the perfect timing?  Romans 11:25,  Revelation 1:7 Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.
• How might smart phones and 24-hour news cycles be making it possible for all eyes to see His return?

Join me tomorrow for who is this Jesus and “Why Is God’s Image So Important?”

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For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

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Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

One of the most interesting points from the movie Life of Pi (which our Lent 2018 devotional series is using to ask Why?) is the way it can remind those of us in the Christian West or in Judeo-Christian America–at least what remains–that we’re a privileged sort. Most of us don’t have a whole football team of gods who come charging out of the locker room to play the game every Sunday that we’ve learned from birth. Doctrine is inculcated early so when the young boy Pi sees the universe in Krishna’s mouth in a comic book, he believes. Thousands of gods offered his Hindu family everything they need. 

In the Christian world, we start with the assumption of monotheism–one god religious belief.  There are 3 great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).  Of those, Judaism and Christianity share some Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament, not because it’s old and was supplanted by the new, but because it’s historic, even at the time Jesus walked the earth.)  The knowledge of One True God is ingrained in many of us.

Other areas of the world, however, don’t begin with that assumption.  In their worldview, they collect gods like some people collect souvenir shot glasses or those decals on the back of an RV.  It’s no big deal for them to add Jesus to the mix.

But what are they really doing? 

That’s not how Jesus does things.  He’s not one to play on some other god’s team.  He knows there are no other gods.  (Isaiah 44:1-18)

It’s important that Jesus preexists with the Father because that’s what Scripture says about Jesus, the Word of God. 

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

***

Without His being eternally God, we’d have two gods or maybe even more.  Without His being sent from the Father to reveal the Father to us, we’d find ourselves able to make Jesus a god of our own making instead of a God of His own revealing. 

Ask any world religion where their gods come from and it tells you a lot.  If it’s not Jesus alone–sent from the Father as Emmanuel, God with us–their god is just one among many idols.

Food for thought:

• If Jesus wasn’t eternally God, then how can He BE the way? (John 14:4-6) John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
• How does knowing Jesus came from the Father comfort us and give us hope? John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you … 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Join me tomorrow for “Why Did It Take So Long for Him to Show Up? “

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.